


together more whole

by dansunedisco



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Crushes, F/M, Gen, Hero Worship, Jon Snow is a Stark, Melancholy, Role Reversal, Sansa Snow, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7538269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco/pseuds/dansunedisco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was a Snow, and half a Stark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	together more whole

**Author's Note:**

> Anon asked for: 'Sansa is Ned's bastard and Jon is the trueborn Stark.'
> 
> -
> 
> This 'verse headcanon: Sansa, Robb, and Jon are all about the same age. Robb and Jon are twins, with Jon being the oldest.

Sansa had won the honor of chasing Arya today, and chase she did, through the courtyard and the stables, up and around the battlements. She wrangled Arya off wooden rafters before breakfast, and shooed her out of the East-facing tower after lunch, and barely kept her from tearing right through the pig pens in her haste to shake Sansa’s heated pursuit afterwards. And it was there, between filth and the hay-covered cobblestone, where Sansa had to let Arya slip free from her sight. She sighed, and gathered her skirts up.

It was unpleasant work, herding Arya like a particularly disobedient cat, but it _was_ familiar, Sansa had to admit. Annoyingly so. She loved Arya, of course, in the way an older sibling loved her younger, but, by the tail end of breakfast, she had wanted nothing more than to throttle her contemptuous little sister who never, ever wanted to listen to anyone. Unless, of course, they were giving her lessons on varied and vile topics.

When Sansa finally found her charge again, after half an hour of searching, it was with the smithy: a gray-haired man named Bryon who surely thought it delightfully innocent that the little lady of Winterfell wanted to know of steel and swordsmithing. Sansa disagreed.

“Gods, you’re getting on my nerves today!” she snapped, grabbing Arya’s elbow to simultaneously carry her from the smithy’s tent, and to keep her from running away once more. Septa Mordane wanted Arya on the top of the hour for her evening lessons: the whole reason why Sansa had been put in charge of keeping Arya in rights in the first place. “Come on. Septa Mordane is waiting for us; you’ll be late if we don’t leave now.”

Arya, of course, wrenched her arm from Sansa’s grasp. “I didn’t ask for a simpering, time-keeping _shadow_ ,” she growled, and stomped her foot into a nearby puddle for good measure, “and I don’t have to listen to you!”

Sansa breathed through her nose, willing patience. “You must, and you will.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your elder sister!”

“My half-sister,” Arya shouted, and Sansa braced for what always came after Arya made her distaste of her presence apparent: “Sansa Snow, Sansa Snow, Sansa _Snow_!”

Though she’d been expecting it, Sansa froze to the spot, mortified, for Arya’s bellowing had drawn the attention of every man, woman, and scampering rodent of Winterfell nearby--including, she noted with mounting horror, her two brothers, Robb and Jon, and her father’s Greyjoy ward. “Arya,” she hissed, and made one, last desperate grab, but Arya was as quick as a winter rabbit, and Sansa’s effort was now only halfhearted. _Let Arya get an earful from the septa_ , she thought spitefully. She’d deserve it. Sansa didn’t even care that she’d get an earful, too.

Arya never arrived for her lessons, and Sansa endured the septa’s ire in her stead. She was released when she began to cry, and slunk off to the godswood to tend to her hurt feelings. A bastard she may be, but she was the most tenderhearted of all the Stark children. An irony, if there ever was one: a Snow without a heart of ice; a Northern girl with the temperament of summer.

 _Snow,_ she thought. Oh, how she hated the name, and how she hated Arya. Arya, who had everything and wanted none of it; Arya, who would be content living in a pen with the pigs, learning from the smithy, squabbling with Robb and Jon and all the foul men of the castle. Arya, who would be promised to a prince when she came of age.

“Why doesn’t _Sansa_ have to do this?” Arya had cried once, when she’d been made to learn house colors, their sigils and their sayings.

“She is your _half-sister_ ,” Septa Mordane had replied, casting Sansa a sympathetic eye.

Sansa remembered the day vividly, as it had been the first lesson Arya had ever taken to heart. She also remembered it as the first time she had felt anything other than Eddard Stark’s daughter, a base born girl whose mother had had the good fortune of earning an honorable knight’s favor during a time of war, and the grace to die.

Just as she was wallowing in the lowest point of her self-pity, Jon appeared between the trees. His dark hair was overgrown, his beard unkempt in the way that seemed to please the young men of Winterfell and displease Lady Catelyn in equal turn. Sansa thought him handsome once, before she realized brothers and sisters were not meant to marry no matter their standing; by rights, he was everything a gallant, northern Stark heir should be. Someone she wished she could marry, and someone she never would. He was a pensive sort, as honorable as his father; and, though he made merry when the occasion called for it, he walked about like he had the world on his shoulders. In a way, he did. One day, he would wield Ice like his father before him, and rule the North and its subjects as the Starks have done for hundreds and hundreds of years.

She swiped angrily at her cheeks and eyes as he approached, done feeling sorry for herself and tired of tears. For now, at least. She wouldn’t cry in front of Jon. She was a Snow, and half a Stark. That meant something. It meant she could be brave.

“Jon,” she greeted, trying for a smile. She’d been told countless times how sweet they were.

“Sansa,” he replied. There was an awkwardness about him as he regarded her, which she attributed to his lack of experience talking to women. “Do you... are you alright?”

“Yes,” she lied. Of all the Stark children, she and Jon spoke the least, and so she didn’t feel terribly about doing so. Still, she shrunk in on herself at the false admission, and reconsidered: “Well, no. You heard what happened with Arya. You were there.”

“Aye, I was,” he agreed. He shifted, awkward again, and moved to sit next to her under the heart tree. “You know she didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, after a long moment.

In her heart, Sansa knew his words to be true. Even so, they stung. “I have no room to find offense in her words, as there is none,” she said bitterly. “I am a Snow. Your half-sister. A bastard.” Her eyes pricked with hot tears once more, and she fought against spilling them with all her might.

Jon frowned, and gently placed his hand over the fist she had clenched on her knee. He was warm, and she could feel the pads of his calloused fingers against her skin. “You’re still family. You’re still _my_ family,” he said. “Arya is young, and doesn’t yet realize how her words can--mean something. Hurt people.”

She sniffed delicately. “Are you asking me to forgive her?”

“If it pleases you.”

“And do you hope it pleases me?”

He smiled faintly. “I do.”

“I suppose… I suppose I can find it in my heart to forgive, then,” she teased. The shroud of sadness was still on her, heavy and imposing, but with Jon smiling softly at her, it felt easier to bear. They sat under the heart tree for a while longer, talking about nothing of importance, until Sansa was laughing easily and Jon smiled freely. Sweet, silly dreams of being a lady in the king’s court and betrothals to fair princes would never be hers to have, but--she had family, and love, and perhaps, she thought, that would be more than enough to last a lifetime.

Jon squeezed her hand before he stood, and offered his arm.

Together, they walked home.

**Author's Note:**

> I split this up from my prompt fill collection because I am preeeetty positive this will be a continued 'verse. Anything you want to see explored? :)
> 
> -
> 
> As always, feel free to drop a line at [the tumblr](http://tchallafalcon.tumblr.com/).


End file.
